Diablo II

I am not an ARPG fan. I repeat: I am not an ARPG fan, which makes my love for Diablo II that much more special. I have only been playing this game for roughly a year due to said aversion towards ARPG games. It's a game I always respected, but figured it wouldn't be my thing. Finally, at the insistence of my best friend who's been a fan of the game since its release, I decided to give it an honest shot and man, was I rewarded in spades. What always held me back, and continues to hold me back from RPGs in general is the tedious and often mind-numbing amount of time spent towards the customization of the character; shit I've never cared about in a video game. Just let me pick a class and get me into the fucking game. Thankfully, Diablo II wastes no time and does just that. The game has a great pacing through all of the acts, matched with a very satisfying feel to the action-packed combat. The story is well-written, the dialogue and voice acting are superb, and the level design is distinguishing and well-implemented. But what really sets this game apart from others of its ilk is the atmosphere, which oozes from every nook and cranny of this game. The music, the lighting (or lack thereof), the environments, the echoed, sometimes dripping sound effects... it all really pushes this game to another level that I haven't really felt from, well, very few games in general. This has easily climbed its way into my top 15 games of all time, and is a game I would happily recommend to anyone to try.

I have fond memories of playing the original "Diablo II" at my friend's house in elementary school, as my parents wouldn't buy me the game. We would replay act one over and over again, and we'd always get stuck in act two. Years later, I got my hands on "Diablo III" on PS3, but it quickly lost its luster for me. It just felt like it wasn’t worth the limited time I had to play on consoles. However, when I saw this “Diablo II” remake available for Switch, I knew I had to give it a chance.

Even though I don’t think I got any of the plot, the gameplay loop is so addictively simple that I started from killing time with it to desperately finding time to play with it.

While the graphics are vastly improved, the tiny character models make it difficult to fully appreciate the visual overhaul on mobile consoles. Despite that, I still enjoyed playing as a Necromancer (as usual). Even though I had to spam potions in the late chapters, I found the game to be relatively easy to complete, with the exception of Baal and Duriel.

The game's mechanics and progression system have aged well, and the new quality-of-life features make it more accessible to newcomers.

A fun ARPG.

I'd played this a bit as a kid, but never got far into it. It's been fun revisiting it and getting into it. The remaster looks really nice.

Some of the stages can be annoying as the random generator can sometimes mean you'll walking around the same level for ages before your finally find the exit.

It will be interesting to see if this game, close to its vanilla form, gets remastered at some point; Starcraft doesn't look too bad in 2018 I don't think DIablo 2 will look that bad either.

As for the game itself: another pointless, time-wasting, item grind of a game, but its visual cues are very satisfying.